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arXiv:1609.05217 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Many-body lattice wave functions from conformal blocks

Sebastián Montes, Javier Rodríguez-Laguna, Hong-Hao Tu, Germán Sierra

Published Feb 27, 2017• 4 citations
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Abstract

We introduce a general framework to construct many-body lattice wave functions starting from the conformal blocks (CBs) of rational conformal field theories (RCFTs). We discuss the different ways of encoding the physical degrees of freedom of the lattice system using both the internal symmetries of the theory and the fusion channels of the CBs. We illustrate this construction both by revisiting the known Haldane-Shastry model and by providing a novel implementation for the Ising RCFT. In the latter case, we find a connection to the Ising transverse field (ITF) spin chain via the Kramers-Wannier duality and the Temperley-Lieb-Jones algebra. We also find evidence that the ground state of the finite-size critical ITF Hamiltonian corresponds exactly to the wave function obtained from CBs of spin fields.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.95.085146

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We introduce a general framework to construct many-body lattice wave functions starting from the conformal blocks (CBs) of rational conformal field theories (RCFTs). We discuss the different ways of encoding the physical degrees of freedom of the lattice system using both the internal symmetries of the theory and the fusion channels of the CBs. We illustrate this construction both by revisiting the known Haldane-Shastry model and by providing a novel implementation for the Ising RCFT. In the latter case, we find a connection to the Ising transverse field (ITF) spin chain via the Kramers-Wannier duality and the Temperley-Lieb-Jones algebra. We also find evidence that the ground state of the finite-size critical ITF Hamiltonian corresponds exactly to the wave function obtained from CBs of spin fields.
We present a characterization of the many-body lattice wave functions obtained from the conformal blocks (CBs) of the Ising conformal field theory (CFT). The formalism is interpreted as a matrix product state using continuous ancillary degrees of freedom. We provide analytic and numerical evidence that the resulting states can be written as BCS states. We give a complete proof that the translationally invariant 1D configurations have a BCS form and we find suitable parent Hamiltonians. In particular, we prove that the ground state of the finite-size critical Ising transverse field (ITF) Hamiltonian can be obtained with this construction. Finally, we study 2D configurations using an operator product expansion (OPE) approximation. We associate these states to the weak pairing phase of the p+ipp+ipp+ip superconductor via the scaling of the pairing function and the entanglement spectrum.
We propose a set of spin system wave functions that is very similar to lattice versions of the Laughlin states. The wave functions are conformal blocks of conformal field theories and for a filling factor of ν = 1/2 we provide a parent Hamiltonian, which is valid for any even number of spins and is at the same time a 2D generalization of the Haldane-Shastry model. We also demonstrate that the Kalmeyer-Laughlin state is reproduced as a particular case of this model. Finally, we discuss various properties of the spin states and point out several analogies to known results for the Laughlin states.
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We develop a method of constructing excited states in one-dimensional spin chains which are derived from the SU(2)1\text{SU}{(2)}_{1}SU(2)1​ Wess-Zumino-Witten conformal field theory (CFT) using a parent Hamiltonian approach. The resulting systems are equivalent to the Haldane-Shastry model. In our ansatz, correlation functions between primary fields correspond to the ground state of the spin system, whereas excited states are obtained by insertion of descendant fields. Our construction is based on the current algebra of the CFT and emphasizes the close relation between the spectrum of the spin system and the underlying CFT. This general structure might imply that the method could be applied to a wider range of model systems.
At a quantum critical point, the low-energy physics of a quantum spin chain is described by conformal field theory (CFT). Given the Hamiltonian of a critical spin chain, we propose a variational method to build an approximate lattice representation ϕ_{α} of the corresponding primary CFT operators ϕ_{α}^{CFT}. We then show how to numerically compute the operator product expansion coefficients C_{αβγ}^{CFT} governing the fusion of two primary fields. In this way, we complete the implementation of Cardy's program, outlined in the 1980s, which aims to extract the universality class of a phase transition, as encoded in the so-called conformal data of the underlying CFT, starting from a microscopic description. Our approach, demonstrated here for the critical quantum Ising model, only requires a generic (i.e., in general, nonintegrable) critical lattice Hamiltonian as its input.
We generalize the matrix product states method using the chiral vertex operators of conformal field theory and apply it to study the ground states of the XXZ spin chain, the ${J}_{1}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{2}$ model and random Heisenberg models. We compute the overlap with the exact wave functions, spin-spin correlators, and the Renyi entropy, showing that critical systems can be described by this method. For rotational invariant ansatzs we construct an inhomogenous extension of the Haldane-Shastry model with long-range exchange interactions.